Vakhtang Panchulidze, born in 1956, is a famous Georgian professional actor of theater and television series, protagonist of a dozen films, set in the Caucasus. Lali, born in 1985, belonging to the same ancient and noble Georgian family of the Panchulidze Aznauri Didebuli counts, is instead president of an international cultural association, ACIGEA (Italia Georgia Eurasia) which deals with the promotion of art, music, cinema and, in general, of the Georgian identity in Italy and throughout the Western world. Georgian filmography has been known and appreciated all over the world since the early 1900s and represented the hardest and most valuable core during the years of the Soviet Union. In this regard, we recall the legendary Kartveli Pilmi of Tiblisi, a pioneering state center of film production, founded in 1921 and remained active until 1994, which later became a private consortium. Hundreds of films have been produced, all characterized by a neorealism, imbued with the religious and patriotic spirit, and by the traditions that Georgians care a lot about, therefore very strong plots and images, theatrical, sentimental, sometimes even dramatic. The great Italian master of world cinema, Federico Fellini, describes it as follows:
“The Georgian film is a completely unique phenomenon, vivid, philosophically stimulating, very wise”
There is everything that can make me cry. Impossible to list in a single article all the rich Georgian film production, its directors, actors and screenwriters, we can only encourage you to search the internet where you will find lots of information, material and even films to download and view also in English. Among the emerging and promising Georgian cinema, however, we cannot but point out the young singers and actors Luca Chikovani and Giorgi Giligashvili and the director Nikoloz Khomasuridze.
“In recent years, Georgian films have undergone a strong American influence, but they always retain their own style that must be preserved for its and our extraordinary specificity and cultural richness”, said Lali Panchulidze, present at the last Venice Film Festival.